When Villains are Hunted
by aimingfornotmuch
Summary: The twisted love of Magneto and Mystique combined with horror that the movie directors could not bring themselves to put into the X-men movies.
1. Chapter 1

Dreams tell us more than we are willing to see. More than we are willing to admit to ourselves.

That night Magnus was tormented.

He saw the white marble of her eyes.

He saw the smooth curve of her smile.

He saw his own death.

"You have to see what I've been doing," Magnus called. He grabbed Raven and pulled her into an empty room. She stiffened at his touch, before allowing him to draw her in to see another one of his inventions.

Everyone on campus thought that they were close, but she knew better. He saw her as someone to drag into his schemes, but nothing more. She was not even sure he was capable of having feelings for another person. The way he spoke to her was often a mixture of arrogance and contempt. She was sure that if they were not the only two students in the university who had powers, that he would have nothing to do with her.

"What is it?" said Raven, "A bicycle helmet?"

Magnus smirked at her, "So much more my dear. One day we are going to meet a telepath, and they will try to read my mind, or control me, or something along those lines. This helmet is going to stop them."

"How do you know?"

"I don't. But when I meet one, I'll try it out." Magnus reached out and grabbed her hand, "Tell me I'm a genius." When she didn't respond he pulled her right close to his face. She knew this was more of a threat than a gesture of affection.

Raven gingerly extracted herself from his grip, "You're... a genius. Now stop doing that... People will think things."

"I know," Magnus laughed, "I just love how uncomfortable it makes you. I mean, I'm sure they all think you're in love with me. Actually, I kind of think it too"

"You're disturbing, manipulative, bitter and cold. The other girls in our course might be in love with you, but you should know that there is nothing at all that I like about you."

"Oh... I'm cut," He said sarcastically, before turning his back on her and continuing on with his project.

That night somebody died. It was a first year student called Mona. She was found in the science laboratory in a pool of blood with all her limbs cut off except her right arm. In that hand she held the blade responsible for the severance of her limbs.

Bianca, the student that found her, was sent to campus counsellor immediately. The police had tried to get a coherent word out of her, but the words she was muttering under her breath barely sounded like a language.

Raven had never seen Magnus so excited.

"Finally! Things are happening," He exclaimed, "This is a chance to try out our powers for something real."

"Well, that is probably the most insensitive thing you have ever said," said Raven, "Someone is dead and you make it sound like... an opportunity."

"Everything is an opportunity Raven, absolutely everything. Now, the first thing I would like to find out, is did this girl actually cut off her own limbs, or did someone else cut them off for her?"

"And who is going to find this out for you? Because I won't."

"Hush", whispered Magnus, putting his arm around her, "Look at this as a murder mystery. We are the good guys remember? We've been given powers for a reason."

"You don't believe that."

"Ah, but you do, don't you," he said while stroking her hair, "Either you are destined to make the world a better place, or you are an abomination that should be stamped out. We both know the latter isn't true."

"Fine, whatever. But I don't want to get involved any further than this."

"Thank you sweetheart," he said, smiling contentedly, "I'll be waiting here. Bring me back something useful."

It had been easy to slip on the appearance of one of the police officers. The overweight man had been loitering around the university cafeteria, waiting for his turn in line. Raven knew the other officers were on the other side of the campus, interviewing witnesses, so she took off to see if she could get any information out of them.

"Any results from the lab?" Raven asked, in what she presumed was a manly oice.

"Mac, you're here. I thought you were having lunch." The reply came from a burly looking policewoman.

Raven shrugged and tried to sound nonchalant, "Yeah, the line was too long. Thought I'd wait a bit then head back there."

"Well, the lab results didn't tell us much. The only fingerprints on the knife were those of the girl. Seemed like she hacked her own legs off. Seems a bit over the top though. I mean, a girl with no psychiatric history suddenly mutilates herself and dies on the floor in a building she didn't even have any classes in? I don't need my years of police experience to tell me something smells about this."

"So we're looking at murder then."

The female police officer shook her head, "These are the kinds of cases you hope you don't see on the job."


	2. Chapter 2

Raven was dissatisfied with how much information she had gathered but she did not want to risk being found out. She decided to see if she could discover anything about Mona.

Still wearing the appearance of the police officer, Raven walked around campus and stopped students to interrogate them. A lot of them were fairly unconcerned about Mona's death, but there was one student that caught her eye. It was a small Asian first year student named Xi'an. The girl looked genuinely distressed by Mona's death, even though she claimed not to have any ties with her.

"Are you sure you do not know who Mona was friends with?"

"I'm not really familiar with her sir."

"Missy," Raven said in her most authoritative voice, " I feel like I'm not getting the whole truth. I've been a about police officer for a long time, and I've developed the knack for knowing when someone is lying to me."

Xi'an looked like she was to cry, "Um... maybe... she might have been in my criminology tutorial. But I don't know anything else about her, I swear. I just - didn't want you to take me to the police station for questioning. I have a test tomorrow."

"That's alright sweetie, I don't bite," said Raven, "I just need to know who she was friends with. Maybe if she had any enemies."

"Oh... yes. Well, she mainly hung around the gothic kids. No one really liked her, but no one really hated her either."

"Thank you," Raven said kindly, "I'll take it from here."

Raven knew exactly which group Xi'an was talking about. They were always sprawled across the lawn like they owned the place. Magnus had always thought they looked like cockroaches to be squashed.

There were seven members in this group. She knew of them, but she hadn't realised one of them was a girl called Mona. This was because they wore hooded cloaks around themselves to disguise their identity, and called each other by the days of the week. Mona had been called Monday by her peers.

At night time they held performances in the media rooms. They had been talked about by all of the students, but the last time she had attended it had been nothing more than a couple of films trying too hard to be thought provoking. There was one on at night time that she thought she should probably attend.

Raven found Magnus sitting in his dorm room.

"It's pretty hot in here, do you think I should take my shirt off?" he said playfully.

"Whatever. Look, Mona was one of the goth-artist crowd. Do you want to help me question them tonight?"

"Do I look like Nancy Drew?" He asked, while taking his shirt off, "Look at these abs, would Nancy Drew have these abs?"

"So are you going to make me do it myself again?"

"Yes please."

"Screw you," Raven said, "I don't know why I keep doing what you ask."

"Maybe I can control your mind!" Magnus said gleefully, "But most likely, you're just an extremely passive person."

"Maybe you only ask me to do things I want to do anyway. Besides, I think one of those goth guys is pretty cute. What is his name? Friday? Maybe if I start something with him, people will stop talking about us like we're actually together."

"Fine, go find someone crazier than me, I'm sure it'll work well for you."


	3. Chapter 3

Raven decided to go as herself to the performance. There was no point going as another student when she could find out all she wanted from without changing.

The media lecture room looked very different from last time. Somehow they had managed to string a thick red curtain across the ceiling to make it look more like a stage. After a few minutes the doors shut behind her, and the lights went off. Raven had never been afraid of the dark before, but being in such complete darkness was a little chilling.

All of a sudden she saw a hand come out of the darkness above her head. It was a wrinkled mess, like it had not been clean for days. It swooped down towards her then disappeared.

Then above her head twenty other hands appeared, all of different sizes and shapes, waving in a smooth dancelike fashion. As she watched them, she felt something cold touch her back Somewhere else in the theatre, a girl screamed.

When she turned around to see who touched her, there was no one.

Then the lights turned back on. That was when the real panic started. Everyone's faces and clothes were smeared with blood.

Raven was the only one who walked calmly out of that theatre. She had not been sure what she had been expecting from that show, but she knew those gothic students were not that malevolent. She followed the screaming throngs to the bathroom, where all the girls were frantically rinsing their hair and clothes in running water.

"That was... amazing!" said one girl, "It was so realistic... I wonder how they projected the hands on the ceiling?"

"When I was watching the hands dance around I swear I felt them touch me."

"So did I!"

"And when did they pour this fake blood on is? It's absolutely genius."

Raven rinsed her hair out quietly, trying not to draw any attention to herself. To her dismay one of the girls turned to her, "Raven, right? Why isn't Magnus here?"

"We're not exactly attached at the hip."

"No need to bite, I was just asking. What did you think of the show?"

"A little macabre I guess. It's not exactly tasteful to do something like this straight after someone's been murdered."

"They're just capitalising on the hype. I think it is pure artistic genius."

"A special kind of genius I guess."

Raven left the blood on her clothes, and went off to find the gothic students. She knew Friday from one of her classes, and they had done one group project together. Unfortunately there was a massive cheering crowd of students all trying to talk to them, so this proved to be more difficult than she expected. Eventually she managed to worm her way through the crowd to talk to him.

"Raven," Friday said, calmly nodding at her, "I'm not really sure who these other people are."

"Do you mind if we go somewhere to talk?" Raven said, shouting over the masses.

"Of course."

Friday drew the hood over his head, and they walked out of the theatre.

When they were alone, Raven smiled at him. They had bonded during the group project in a way she had not been able to do with the other students. It was probably because they were both stood out for being outcasts. He was probably the only other student apart from Magnus that she spent any time talking to.

"I'm just going to be blunt. I'm a bit surprised at tonight's performance," Raven watched Friday's face carefully, but as usual, he wore his normal serious expression on his chalk white face.

"We wanted to branch out."

"Yes, but straight after the murder of one of your friends?"

"She was not one of our friends. She left our group a few weeks before she was murdered."

"What? Why?"

"I cannot say. But we did not kill her, if that is what you are thinking. In fact, we are all very afraid that someone is after us."

"What? Why would anyone be after you?"

"I am not sure. But tonight we wanted to show them we were not afraid."

Raven looked down at the program they had given her at the start of the night. The title scrawled across the top was, "We are not afraid."

"Well, that makes sense," said Raven, "I hope you are all feeling okay about this ordeal. Have you talked to the police yet?"

"We have told them all we know, but it is not very much."

Magnus was sitting on his bed, wearing his strange new helmet. She tried not to laugh at how ridiculous he looked.

Raven took her shirt off and dropped it in front of Magnus. "You should find out if this is real blood."

"Wow, what a seduction technique," he said, winking at her, "Unfortunately you have a body like a white walrus, and I'm not into bestiality."

"Just let me know," Raven said, feeling too tired from the night to play his mind games. She pulled out a t-shirt from his drawers and left. She would tell him about the performance later, but for now she just wanted to get some sleep. It had been a long and confusing day.


	4. Chapter 4

That night she dreamed of tearing someone's body apart with her bare hands. She scraped their skin off with her nails, howling like a wild animal. There was blood everywhere, soaking through her clothes, through her hair, into her mouth.

She looked up and saw the other students around her, leaping around in the moonlight like silent acrobats. Their eyes were wide and their mouths gaped open, like they were astonished at what she was doing but they were powerless to stop.

The sickening stench of roses filled the air. She saw flowers piled up on Mona's grave, her armless body looking almost comical in the coffin.

When she woke up she was lying out on the lawn.

She checked her clock, it was 5am.

What an awful time to wake up. She stumbled back into the Uni-lodge and fell asleep the minute her head touched the pillow.

Friday was waiting for her outside, with a piece of paper in his hands.

"You are probably our only hope right now."

"What?"

"I know about your powers. I have powers as well, but they are very different to yours. I can read minds."

"What?"

"I can read people's minds to a certain extent. But I'm not very powerful. Your gift is so much more useful, I think you have a better chance than me to find out what's going on."

"Can't you just read everyone's minds?"

"No... I can only read someone's mind if they are thinking about me. I can't go around talking individually to every person. I need you to work out who would want to kill someone in my family. This is your fight too - if anyone finds out that you have powers you might be next."

He shoved the piece of paper into her hands and disappeared before she could say anything else.

THE LIST:

Monday - she can create illusions during the full moon

Tuesday - he can start conflicts between anyone

Wednesday - he can make someone temporarily insane if he touches them

Thursday - she can temporarily blind people

Friday - he can read your mind when you are thinking about him

Saturday - she can make you remember

Sunday - she can make you forget

Magneto received the news without much surprise. Raven suspected he knew about the family for a lot longer than she did. It would make sense why he was obsessing over his helmet invention.

"Why would he give me a list of his family's powers? It doesn't make any sense."

Magnus smiled lazily, "I think Friday doesn't trust his own family."

"Well their powers don't exactly inspire confidence in me. Insanity? Amnesia? What kind of powers are these."

"Hush child," said Magnus in his usual condescending tone, "I think it's time for me to start being a bit more proactive about this. It's starting to get interesting."

"What are you going to do?"

"Not sure exactly. For a start, my powers are largely useless against those with mental abilities. I only really have power in the physical arena. Once you start messing with my mind I'm useless. But I have a feeling I already know what's going on with these freaks."

"And are you going to tell me?"

"No," Magnus winked, "I'm just going to take you along for the ride."


End file.
